Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Megyn Kelly Explains the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment was meant to stop the government from interfering with an individual's right to bear arms - it was meant to prevent exactly this kind of thing where lawmakers are trying to mess with somebody's firearm ownership.

Is that a fair way do describe the amendment? Or is it a gun-rights spin job?

Wasn't the Second Amendment about ensuring that an armed militia of individuals could come together if needed to protect against a tyrannical government or an invading army? What in the world does that have to do with modern-day restrictions on certain weapons and magazine capacity?

The answer: nothing at all. The Second Amendment is absolutely irrelevant to current discussions about gun rights and gun control and should be seen as such.

1. For most of the history of the republic, the Second Amendment was interpreted (as the framers intended) to exempt the use of weapons by State agencies from burdensome regulations that where inevitably to have been implemented. Until D.C. v. Heller was used by the Court as a highly political vehicle to overturn centuries of legal precedent by the re-interpretation of Miller v. United States, it was an accepted fact that the Second Amendment guarantees no legal right to the individual possession of small arms.

2. Government agents such as the military personnel and police that you mentioned convey bear the interest of public safety, and are therefore endowed with coercive powers (such as the lawful use of arms) as a means to protect society from the nefarious deeds of criminals, and as a means to "ensure domestic tranquility" in the event of an insurrection. Therefore certain members of society ("State Actors" if you will) may be endowed with certain privileges necessary for the fulfillment of their duty.

Miller ruled that the individual did not have a right to own a sawed off shotgun because that was not a weapon that he could be expected to need for military service. The implication was that he did have the right to own weapons that would be appropriate for militia service. Following this precedent would invalidate most or all of the NFA of 34. If the Supreme Court did any reinterpretation of the existing law, it was in their emphasis on self defense vs. militia service and the fact that this restricted rights further than they would have been had they stuck with what the Court said in Miller.

"I wish Koba (Joseph Stalin's pseudonym), E.N., and Blackcap would agree that they're all just one person and stop with the proliferation of sockpuppets."

AND I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT TOO, IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS! Seriously? First you accuse me of being Laci, then an Agent of the NKVD, then "Blackcap" and now you accuse me of being Stalin himself. Looks like we are making some progress here. I will have to report to your nurse on that one.